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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Places I am Learning from this Spring Break.

It is spring break here which means I have some spare time
to catch-up on some professional development and reading. I thought I would
take a minute and blog about a few of my favorite places to find ideas,
resources and inspiration. So today’s blog is called:

Twitter offers quick bites of pro-d without too much stress.
The trick is to find great educators and follow them, then read what they have
to say. Join in on the conversation by following hashtags that apply to you. I personally love #edchat #frimm #kinderchat and #langchat. When I find someone who
interests me I then follow them. Some of my favorite education tweeps are: @2learn2@web20classroom@WeAreTeachers@Fr_Immersion98@sylviaduckworth@MmeVeilleux

I started my scoop.it page a little by accident not really
understanding what it was but I love it. It forces me to look for targeted resources
on my topic on interest and evaluate them in terms of quality and usefulness to
others. I also love the topic newsfeed
that gives me a quick glance at articles connected to my interest areas and the
ability to easily erase them when they aren’t useful to me.

No really, stay with me on this one. It is all the fun of
scoop.it but without the “expert” tag. Pinterest is a wonderful place to get
introduced to new ideas and new teacher blogs, websites and resources. It is also a great visual way to keep track of
ideas you want to try. My art program has become much more interesting since I
discovered pinterest. The trick for me
was to follow teacher boards that I found useful. I rarely follow all the
boards a person has; only teaching boards that are useful for me.

This article was brought to my attention by Twitter. I am making my way through this list. Some interesting videos here to reflect on. A good reminder that I need to spend more time listening to TED talks too.

I follow a lot of blogs and am a little behind on my
reading. Enter Spreeder to the rescue. This
tool helps me “Speed Read” my way through those blog posts I have been meaning
to read. Train your brain to look at words faster and find meaning. I use this
to get through a lot of data quickly. When I find a rich document I need to
read more slowly I go back and read it again without the tool.

So these are some of the places I am learning from today. I would love to hear from other educators
about what they are using. What are some of your favorite pro-d tools? What are
your go to spots online?